Spiritual Formation in a Digital World

Bible Reading

I’ve written a lot about meditation. In fact, I think I may have written about it more than any other single topic.

And there’s good reason for that. Of all the ways to experience God, it has been the most profound for me. Even when I have no desire to worship, study, or teach, meditation always seems welcoming. Its comforting to me. I don’t have to prove anything. I just sit and be.

Maybe it’s the lazy man’s worship. Or maybe the introvert’s worship. That’s probably what I like about it.

Beyond that meditation has a ton of physical and mental benefits. Meditation can:

These health benefits can come from any form of meditation, but I’m encouraging forms of meditation that are specifically Christian. There are a few reasons I practice this specific kind of meditation.

I love Mr. Rogers. I really love Mr. Rogers. The more I hear about him the more I love him. I recently heard that for the last decade of his life he weighed 143 pounds and was thankful every morning when he stepped on the scale because he thought of it as a message from God saying, “I love you” because of the number of letters in the words. Only Fred Rogers would think that way. When he won his lifetime achievement award at the Emmy’s he asked everyone to be silent for a moment to remember the people in their life that encouraged them to get where they were now. He really was as kind as his show would have you believe.

EDIT 4.10.14: This fragment has been verified as authentic since this post was originally written. This does not, of course, mean that Jesus was married. I just thought I should update since I originally said it may be a fake.

Last week a fragment of a Coptic text was released that quotes Jesus as saying, “My wife . . .” It has gotten a lot of attention and has even been referred to as The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. Even though Karen King, the scholar who first presented the fragment, stated that this is not evidence that Jesus had a wife, the Internet has taken to using the fragment to reignite the debate about whether or not Jesus was married. King is right; this is not evidence in that debate. But the reaction to it is evidence that people need a crash course on textual criticism and why the Bible includes what it concludes.

This is part 3 of a 4 part blog series. The other three posts can be read here, here, and here.

About a month ago Paige and I let Soren watch his first superhero movie. We try to avoid anything in which violence is glorified and with most superheroes they win only by being the best fighter. But the old Superman cartoons are different. Superman isn’t violent at all. The bad guys are violent, but he never throws a punch. So we sat down and watched a Fleischer Superman.

And now he is obsessed with Superman. Obsessed.

Stories have a hold on us that we can’t quite shake. They are how we experience and explain the world around us. They get in us and change us. Yesterday I wrote about what to tell your kids about God, but I didn’t tell you how to tell them. Tell them in stories.